Back to Blighty!
- Raff
- Nov 1, 2019
- 4 min read
Returning to the UK for us was going to be difficult. In Spain we had settled and had been lulled in to quite an idyllic life of sunshine and relaxation. Maurice the motorhome was resting up, Audrey was relaxed and so were we. Our days were leisurely and relaxing.
Our drive back through France had been slightly tense, we were driving every day which was quite stressful and our Spanish departure coincided with colder weather in France, which was a shock to our systems, as we had become used to the pleasant Spanish warmth.
Out came the blankets, flip flops were replaced by shoes and shorts were put away.
Our final night in France was at an uninspiring aire in Merlimont Sur Plage, a desolate coastal town where the wind whipped down the rows of terraced houses and against the side of our motorhome, rocking it. It was like a ghost town, with actual tumbleweed (I had always thought tumbleweed only existed in cartoons!)
The town was absolutely deserted, no open shops, nobody walked around - absolutely no life whatsoever! On the morning of our departure, I saw a light on in a downstairs room, but between the slats of a shuttered window. Perhaps people did live here, but hibernated from October onwards. I was pleased to be leaving the town which shows you how desolate it was as our next destination was Calais!
I think this set the tone for our return, as we drove towards Calais port.
We arrived so early we were put on a much earlier ferry, which arrived in Dover before our original ferry had even left Dover!
As we rolled off the boat, we were in thick fog, grey skies and drizzle, which lasted all the way to Sussex and for the first week of our stay in England. We had returned, but our hearts were left in Calella de Palafrugell.
Our trip to the UK is slowly coming to an end and we have had a non stop diary which has left us both feeling exhausted.
Our first port of call was to our wonderful friends Marsha and Steve. Marsha is kindly undertaking the role of personal assistant to the Homsy-Price's collating our post which is redirected to their address. Steve was full of man-flu and on our second visit two weeks later Marsha still shaking off the effects of the Peacehaven 'flu! We are blessed to have such good friends helping us to achieve our travelling aims.
After a couple of days of life admin getting the van serviced, MOT and three new tyres as well as having an MOT for the car and the brake disks and pads replaced. Our main concern on coming back was a to have the air conditioning repaired as this had been out of service since the end of August. Our garage advised it needed a new printed circuit board (PCB) but Dometic couldn't send one as they were all at the Caravan and Motorhome show at the NEC would you believe??!! Extensive chasing of the garage - they are not reknowned for returning calls we gave up and phoned Dometic direct. The following day a service manager called and promised a new would be posted to me - I asked for it to be sent directly to the garage. We booked in for Monday 28th and it all came together. The PCB had arrived, the garage owner fitted and checked it out himself and it was all completed in 30 minutes! I'm not sure why it was so difficult!
Each day has been filled with several appointments: eye tests - John now has contact lenses, the dentist - teeth are in fine order.
It has been wonderful to catch up with our friends and families. They have shown us immense generosity allowing us to use their driveways with hook up which has been a treat. Highlights have been meeting up with our lovely friends Robyn and Dave in Litchfield, visiting John's brother & sister in law Martin and Liz, in Ollerton allowing Raff to collect his new passport from Peterborough. Whilst in Nottinghamshire we went for dinner with John's Dad and visited his sister Gillian with the added surprise of his neice Claire, John, Sam and Ollie who were there too.
Back down south we had an amazing evening with our friends from the harbour and it is clear they want us back with them ASAP! We have been very lucky to have made such wonderful friends with them all and they are certainly dear friends rather than just neighbours! We collected Raff's dad from Heathrow airport and got him settled back into his home in Eastbourne. Meeting up with John's ex boss Paula in Brighton was a wonderful evening meeting Alex and Louis and having a good old catch up.
Our wonderful friends Louise and Mark gave John a very generous gift of dinner at the Mirabelle Restaurant at Eastbourne Grand Hotel for his 60th birthday. We enjoyed this treat on our last Friday in the UK having a splendid evening, great food and great companionship.
Saturday saw a dash to Nottingham for John to attend his school reunion. He hadn't seen some of his school friends since 1975! 12 attended and he was thrilled to be able to catch up on what everyone had been up to. It was a long day though and we didn't get back to Eastbourne until the early hours of Sunday morning.
Our last visit before we returned to France was to Whitstable to meet up with my mum. Despite the Chinese take away annoyingly being closed, mum stumped up a delicious chicken curry.
It has really made us appreciate that we have some absolutely fantastic friendships in our lives and we are very thankful for that.
So what will happen now? Well, we depart for France on Tuesday and our plan is to make our way towards Lake Garda, then to Portofino, along the south coast of France and into Spain. We are meeting up with our dear friends Diana and Adrian in Sitges on 25 November so we're still working to deadlines! After Sitges we're snowbirding to Benidorm and are looking forwards to a number of our friends visiting whilst we are there.
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